gatormade

Sami and Robin (Dameshe) of Zikrayat (that’s me!!!) are profiled in the current issue of Ins and Outs. Ins and Outs is a Long Island City based magazine which features stories on emerging artists living in the neighborhood and throughout western Queens. If you live in the area, pick it up, if not:

DOWNLOAD THE PDF:
http://www.zikrayatmusic.com/insandouts.pdf

or you can view a less fancy version on their website:

http://www.licmagazine.com/content.php

and click on ARTS…

There is also a nice review of our recent show at Gantry Plaza State Park on the lucid culture blog site: http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/zikrayat-at-gantry-plaza-state-park-long-island-city-ny-81908/

This photo totally describes the week Sami and I have had…

Visit this site though. The tee-shirts are equally bizarre….
www.gloomybearstore.com

so my husband sami and i run and arabic music and dance ensemble (i dance, sami plays violin) called “zikrayat” here in new york. last night we did a show at gantry state park near our house in long island city. it was alot of fun, but it was soooo windy. someone just sent me this review, and it was pretty dead on. overall it was a fun experience though:

ZIKRAYAT Live at the Gantries!

http://vintagepatterns.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

ok, back to stuff i’m working on…

recently i started studying with sumie tachibana, a really awesome designer who lives nearby in l.i.c. she’s the real deal. i’ve almost completed my first project in class–a dress made from a silk sari that my friend sarah-jane brought me from india last year. the dress was created from a 1950’s vintage pattern.

it’s about 90% finished, i just have to fix a really jacked-up seam i made and sew in the zipper. it was extremely difficult to make. silk is so slippery and tricky to work with and matching up the lines on the fabric made it even harder. overall though i think it came out really well. i just kinda think it looks like a school uniform!

as a side project i decided to torture myself by making a similar dress with equally challenging fabric…grrrrr….it’s coming along ok, but nearly as neat as the dress i made in class…

i’m sure i am WAYYY to old to think she’s so freakin’ cool, but i do. she is actually quite a good singer with a unique style, voice and she’s only like 12 or something. i got my hair cut this summer in her honor!

well, since the main intention of this blog is to showcase my works in progress i decided to finally post a few.

at the moment, i am halfway finished with this sari bedspread…

sari bedspread

i recently redid our bedroom. it’s very small and was once a deep red color. we had so much clutter that i was beginning to feel like cave so we decided to go yellow! of course i had to keep in with the indian style and i bought this amazing book called ‘alter your space‘ and used that as a guide. i had such a hard time choosing a trim color. in fact i painted and repainted the trim about 5 times when finally i revisited the book and saw this beautiful turquoise adorning a wall. i knew it would be dramatic but i went for it.

i decided to also make my own matching sari duvet cover. it seemed like a simple enough project to execute, but it’s ALOT of fabric to deal with. seriously!

first i cut two sari’s and sewed them together and bought mid-weight fusible. just ironing on the fusible made me want to give up! when i spread it on our bed though, even in it’s unfinished wrinkled state, i was totally in love!

So everyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with Bollywood. This is my new favorite song in the world. Ok, it’s cheesy and I really don’t know what to make of all this naked Shah Ruhk chest action, but it’s catchy as hell. I love that they have a few black ladies dancing and the psuedo Arabic intro, the turkish style bellydance costumes and those funky swimsuits!